


Winterhome

by LauraDoloresIssum



Category: Frostpunk (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28518621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraDoloresIssum/pseuds/LauraDoloresIssum
Summary: The brutal reign of the original Captain comes to an end. An immediate prologue to the Fall of Winterhome scenario.
Kudos: 2





	Winterhome

Michaels woke up at four a.m. to the whistle of the Generator. His eyelashes were frozen shut, so he worked them apart gingerly. All around him, engineers were getting out of their bunks in their hide overcoats, shivering. The bunkhouses near the Generator were warmer, he had heard.

There were construction projects to do today. The men groaned loudly as they read the clipboard that had been hung on the wall during the night. “Two more sawmills,” Morgan announced bitterly to the ring of tiredly anticipatory faces. “Why don’t they use that wood to make the bunkhouses warmer instead of building more damn charcoal burners? I woke up last week with ice on my ballsack. We’re all gonna be infertile if this keeps up.”

“Won’t make any difference to you, eh, Smith?” MacKenzie cracked, elbowing his neighbor, but neither smiled. Both had lost their wives and families back in London.

“What did the Captain say?” asked Michaels, pulling on his second pair of socks.

“Bastard wouldn’t even see me. Some pompous servant told me the problem was being ‘seen after’ and threw me out on my ear. Bloody horseshit.”

“So where are the new ones, then?”

“Right next to the old ones, so the crews will topple trees on each other.”

They wandered in the grey dark between the irregularly-placed buildings, following and occasionally tripping on the pipes in the snow that marked their route. By the time they had hauled all the materials from the storehouse to the build site, their fingers and toes were numb. Frostbite was endemic in Winterhome, particularly in the child workers.

Trying to speak as little as possible, they clumsily hammered up the boards. It was a shit job, and snow was leaking through the roof, but maybe the heat of the saw would warm things up. Or maybe the snow would make it harder for everything to catch fire. Nobody wanted to be assigned to the mills because the workers couldn’t wear wool, and so they were always in danger of freezing to death. It was so cold in here already, even with the pitiful heater running, and it was so dry in the North Arctic that their breath didn’t smoke. Even steam from the snow hitting the logsaw would have been welcome to their split lips.

No time for breakfast before the eight o’clock bell today. As they shuffled out, the line of mill workers had already formed. It said something that some of them wasted body heat to grumble under their breaths.

“Couldn’t have done a better job, could you?” one of them said loudly, examining the ramshackle mill. “You’re making us waste charcoal.”

“I don’t know much more of this I can take,” a figure mumbled, sounding close to tears. The man next to him put a heavily-gloved hand on his shoulder. “I’d rather be here than in the burners. Morning, gents.”

“Mornin’,” said Michaels automatically as they passed.

The steelworks were so cold it was all they could do to keep the bellows going. One man had droplets of molten steel splash up on his arm. He was carried out and work never stopped. They were far below quota that day.

In the evening there was Monday assembly in the public square. From his platform in front of the Generator, the Captain expounded on the virtues of British society. It was announced that food rations would have to be halved that week, again, and if there were any murmurs, they were too quiet for the watchful guards to hear.

Back in the bunkhouse, everyone set their lamps and shoes by the foot of their bed and flopped down until they got back the warmth to chatter.

“I’m going to the Cookhouse,” Chambers finally said, sitting up with a groan. “You boys should come too before they shut.”

“What’s the point?” said Michaels, staring up at the mattress above him. “To get three mouthfuls of soup? I’d rather not taunt my stomach.”

“Hear,” said Turner down the row. “I hear the Captain gets meat and no sawdust.”

“You’d think he’d be a bit fatter if he was eating that well, Turner. His hair’s starting to fall out,” said Michaels.

“Well, he can get in line,” said a man to Michael’s right.

“Where’s O’Brien?” There was an empty bed.

“Gone for three days to the Prison. His wife were sick, so he stole extra soup.”

“Stupid O’Brien,” said Chambers.

“How’ll he get half rations if we’re all on half already?”

“Quarter, I guess.”

“Damn.”

Smith rolled over from his bed by the door, pushing up his glasses. “We should do something. About the Captain.”

“Hold up there, chap,” said Michaels uneasily. “Don’t want the guards to hear you talking like that.”

“He’s right. Bastard should be locked in his own cells.”

“Why stop there? Put him to steam. He’s killed friends of mine. Children have died on shift.”

“Not _our_ children,” said the man in the bunk underneath Smith. “ _Our_ children get rations and a half because we’re valuable to this City. Educated men are a more precious commodity than ever, and the Captain knows it.”

“That’s tripe,” said Smith roughly. “Listen, I work the Station this month. We’ve been communicating with a portable Scout team. Not one of ours. From another City.”

Instantly all the bunk’s attention was focused on him. Hope rose in the bunk like a second thermometer.

“Another City? Where?”

“They wouldn’t say a damn thing about it, which makes me think they were holding out on us. If they were all starving with cold beds too, the first thing they’ve have asked us is if we had food and shelter. When we asked them how much supplies they had, all they did was send requests for our expedition readings. I fancy this proves what we already know. Men aren’t meant to live like we are. The foreman told us to keep mum, but hell if I’m doing that. The whole of Winterhome should know.”

MacReady jumped up. “Then I’m going to tell the other bunks right now.”

“And me,” said MacKenzie. “Damn the Cookhouse anyhow.”

About five of the charcoalers, easily identifiable by their sootstained clothing, left with them. The door slammed. Michaels made an effort to rise, but didn’t quite make it all the way up. He would be back at Steelworks Two at six a.m., and every day for the rest of his life. One day soon he was going to go to sleep and not have the will to stand in the morning. Plenty of citizens had already been disciplined for that.

“What’s your take?” he instead asked Nicholson, who was above him.

There was a creak as Nicholson turned over. He’d been tossing a lot on his injuries since the guards took him in for questioning.

“It’s a lovely day for it,” was the slow, measured response.

The news spread through Winterhome faster than a five-alarm fire. The crackdown was immediate. Smith was put to steam later that day, and a new, quiet face took his bed in Bunkhouse Eighteen. The remainder of the Station crew was lightly beaten and sent back to work. Two riots by the Generator were roughly broken apart, and the usual list of sick and injured waiting for a space in the medical tents mushroomed. So many people were put in the Prison that manpower on shifts were cut by a third or even half, and in some cases the male and female workplaces were integrated, with predictable results and no consequences. More medical tents were finally built, staffed by engineers with little idea what they were doing. More snow pits were dug as victims died waiting for beds or committed suicide. Standard rations were reinstituted, and double offered to any man who joined the Guard. Meanwhile, the snow continued to pile in the uneven spaces between the buildings.

Two weeks later, things had settled into an uneasy lull, with the promise of a growing storm on the horizon. Most people had been released from the Prison. Everyone went to work and lined obediently up at the Cookhouse for their choice of sawdust or soup, but mutiny was in the air. They were losing toes in their sleep. There was no warmth anywhere except for the raging hell of the charcoal burners. There was a spate of thefts as men snuck out at night into the endless empty Frostland on a vain search to find this other city for themselves. Rebellion jumped from eye to eye. The Captain and the Head Engineer shut themselves and their families into the office beside the Generator. And at the end of the week, when the Generator stuttered and failed again, everything sparked.

It started as just another protest, nearly half the city gathered in the city square. A ring of more-or-less-uniformed guards formed a protective ring around the Captain’s offices. The assembled crowd shouted about housing and food. A few inexpertly hurled massive icicles like javelins, proof of the daily, irregular freeze and thaw around the malfunctioning Generator. All the while, the dead, frost-coated column loomed over everything.

Protests had become a test of cold endurance more than anything else. Both the civilians and guards were thin and swayed with the occasional punishing gust. The guards were better protected from the wind; the crowd had a mass of packed bodies. As the searchlights were turned on them and loudspeakers ordered them to disperse, the protestors threw icy snowballs at the guard towers. A truncheon was knocked out of a uniformed hand. The offender was promptly beaten to the ground. Then over by the office’s red double doors, a young guard snatched the keys off of his superior’s belt and threw them into the snow by the protesters’ feet.

All bedlam broke loose.

Michaels, bruised and half blind from the snow on his goggles, found himself with the keys in his hand. Three men, a civilian and two Guards, lunged for him, and he ran forward, ducking frantically between bodies. Blows landed all over him, but he made it to the exposed double doors and began to unlock them with shaking mittens. There was no choice. He didn’t want to die out here.

He was instantly shunted aside by the roaring human wave that surged for the open door. He thought he could hear the Captain’s wife screaming, punctuated by gunshots. Prone and bloody figures were trampled under a mass of feet as the square emptied. He turned and just ran.

The streets were deserted. Everyone was either hiding or stealing from the storehouses with the guards occupied. Drunken laughter bubbled from the nearest Cookhouse. Where on earth had they gotten liquor?

The door to Bunkhouse Eighteen was locked. He threw himself against it, the brittle wood cracking, until it opened. He rushed to his bed and began packing his meager belongings. What had he done? Terror was sour and metallic in the back of his mouth. He hadn’t been thinking, he’d just wanted to hide. He was the Captain’s man, or enough not to be targeted, but if any of the guards had recognized him there was no doubt he would be put to death. And if the mob won… He shuddered.

His only option now was to leave. Camp out in some cranny and pray he didn’t freeze to death before everything settled down. He grabbed the pitiful mattress, and then Nicholson’s, and hauled them around his shoulders.

A roar was growing in the center of town. Michaels looked over, and with a chill of horror saw bodies hanging from the upper parts of the Generator. These mattresses were too heavy for a man who hadn’t eaten well in days. He slipped, and collapsed huffing into a snowbank. He had to get out of here.

Stumbling and tripping on the pipes, he forced himself back up and headed for the outside of the ravine. As he stared out at the endless white void, the last of his willpower slipped away. What was he doing? There was _nothing_ out there. He would freeze to death in hours. Better to at least die here, where someone would find the body.

There was the crackling of fires behind him. It sounded like the whole of Winterhome was burning. He glanced around. The two sawmills were still there. One of them had already collapsed in on itself. He dragged himself toward them instead.

Every surface was caked with sawdust, and the floor was covered in refrozen boot tracks. Michaels stacked the mattresses atop each other, laid out some broken boards, and dug a firepit in the snow with one boot. The ceaseless wind had blown all the sawdust clean out of the air, so at least he wouldn’t burn to death instantly if he lit a fire. Probably. He fetched the two massive sawblades and leaned them against each other over the firepit. The sounds of rioting had reached the edge of town nearest him. The air was already heavy with smoke.

In the cold and the dry, it wasn’t hard to start a fire with the wool lining of his overcoat. Michaels piled on a few more huge splinters of mill waste and waited for the ruckus to die down.


End file.
